What is this? He seems to be arguing against an issue that doesn't exist. As far as I know, there isn't a single school that classifies students as Visual/Kinetic/Aural and then locks them into only those sorts of classes. Instead, they have teachers teach in a number of different ways.
Even a closer look at his anecdote seems ridiculous. Watch kids on a museum field trip and you’ll notice that they stop to look at different paintings: some like cubism, some like impressionism, some like the Old Masters, and so on. That is precisely correct. In the same way though, allowing students to experience art in several different ways allows them to get it much more (get, as in learning about the material). What he seems to be arguing against is telling the students they can't spend the entire trip looking at the Monet paintings, that they have to see the entire museum.
Separating kids into different sorts of classes would be tracking, which in most places is considered an unspeakable horror.
What he's arguing against is what happens after you 'train' teachers on this pedagogy -- they parrot it directly to their students. Common behaviors include: constantly narrating their actions - 'and now for the visual learners' and drilling identity into the students - 'Don't worry, you're a kinesthetic learner.
Your average education student has no poker face -- they can't apply a pedagogy without rubbing it in.
I'm confused. How is that a problem? A student who is having trouble with a problem, rather than being told "Huh. You must be some special kind of stupid, everyone else got it" is instead told "Huh, you must be a real kinesthetic learner."
That does not seem like a problem in the slightest. Yes, it does assign part of that as an identity to a student, but an identity as "Visual Learner" is a lot better, and significantly more useful that "Bad at math." I can't tell you the number of people who have said they were "Bad at math" when their only problem was that they had only ever been exposed to visual math lessons.
I still don't understand what is exactly the problem with having children identify with a learning style. Yes, "their" learning style is more based off of preferences than anything, but being able to acknowledge that you prefer to learn a certain way seems be a step up, not a step down as the article seems to be arguing.
I don't remember being told (or even taught specifically as if I were) one of the three "learning styles."
I do remember being told, "Stop asking questions and finish your worksheet. If you have questions, stop after school." And then after school: "God, you're stupid. Didn't you pay attention in class?"
Of course, this was 6 years ago at a magnet school in an honors math class.
Since then, I've taught myself (rudimentary, but useful) calculus... go figure.
Even a closer look at his anecdote seems ridiculous. Watch kids on a museum field trip and you’ll notice that they stop to look at different paintings: some like cubism, some like impressionism, some like the Old Masters, and so on. That is precisely correct. In the same way though, allowing students to experience art in several different ways allows them to get it much more (get, as in learning about the material). What he seems to be arguing against is telling the students they can't spend the entire trip looking at the Monet paintings, that they have to see the entire museum.